Thursday, 28 April 2011

It was Henry's first day back at school today and Tilly announced it would be her special day too. To qualify, it had to involve: making gingerbread men, picking flowers, painting a rainbow, and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.

I've been feeling a bit guilty about my middle child this week. There's been a lot of requests for craft and a story here and there and play-with-me's that have gone unrequited.

What the heck. The washing, the cleaning, the tidying up - it'll all still be there tomorrow. Why not have a day painting rainbows.

We flew through the list up until I discovered we were out of peanut butter. I usually make our own (have you tried it? dead easy and DELICIOUS.) And I had a few different nuts I wanted to try out.

So we made peanut, almond and brazil nut butter. PAB butter. No, not very catchy. Yummy though.

Here's how it goes.

Peanut, Almond and Brazil Nut Butter

Ingredients:

1 cup natural peanuts

½ cup raw almonds

½ cup raw brazil nuts

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp peanut oil

Method:

Roast all the nuts either in a dry heavy based fry pan or in the oven for 5 minutes or until golden. We used peanut kernels today which had a husk - we got most (OK, some) of the husks off after they'd cooled down but got bored and just threw them in, husks and all. More fibre.

Put the nuts and the salt into a food processor and process for at least five minutes. It's clattering and loud and noisy but it takes at least this long for the oils to start coming out of the nuts and the mix to start clumping.

Then slowly add your peanut oil - you might not need 2 whole tbsp. We like ours really spreadable, but you don't have to use oil at all if you like it thickish.

That's it.

Tilly likes hers on sandwiches.

I think it's gorgeous on hot toast.

I could pretend we ate these nicely at the table. With placemats. Maybe even napery.

We didn't.

Another essential Tilly-declared element to a special day? A tent in the middle of the kitchen.

Brothers and sisters. I love mine. Adore them, actually. I know I'm lucky. I love them because they're awesome and not nut cases.

My Mum loves her sister and brother. As a kid I used to adore it when they got together, particularly Mum and her sister, they would laugh and laugh and laugh until they were just laughing at themselves laughing.

My Dad too. His sister, my aunt, has one of the warmest hugs in the world. And Dad's brother was a very beloved man who left a big gap when he died suddenly fifteen years ago. I remember when I was younger, watching Dougie, my uncle, drive into the dairy. I was about fourteen and I noticed how happy Dad was to see him. I realised they were friends. They stood by Dougie's ute and chatted for about twenty minutes.

You can't make your children be friends. We can just throw them together as often as possible and hope they form bonds independent of us.

I'm so totally blessed to be surrounded by people with heartfelt sibling relationships, it's probably a good model for the smallies. There's no one like a sister to tell it how it is, keep you in line and be the first person you feel like calling in a crisis. Or on a good day. Or with news. Or to tell them about the goat's cheese you're eating right this moment.

I hope you have a brother or a sister. And that you like them.

It's what we hope for as parents, I think: without us, they'll be pals.

And they won't tear each other to shreds the moment we're not looking.

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

It's not all about the birthing. Or the nursing or the sleeplessness or the timeless, endless juggle. Actually for me it's not about that at all.

It's about the yards, really, the hard yards.

And if you'd told me in the beginning that holding a sick child would be a good and strong moment, I wouldn't have believed you.

But that is where it's at.

When you hold your baby and they're burning up with a fever, I reckon that's when the real mother or father in you comes out. Not at breakfast, or storytime or bathtime, although these things are critical, it's at the bottom, right down in the dark and scary moments that we find ourselves as parents.

It's doing the time. Carrying the torch. Holding the lantern. Particularly the first time they're really sick. You realise at that moment that you are fundamentally vulnerable. This little person is so much more important than anything else. You can feel the earth shift. Or maybe it's you.

Little blighters.

With Henry we found ourselves in hospital, in surgery, when he was only 6 weeks old. Inguinal hernia. I opted to hold him while they gave him the general anesthetic. For his four subsequent surgeries, I made Adam go in. There's nothing like holding a small person as they drift into unconsciousness, I could do without it again, thanks.

Being there when they wake up, that's also a highlight. And if we're collecting parenting merit badges I'd have to list any time your child is strapped to an MRI or xray trolley, bound tight with adhesive medical tape to the table, another cannula in their arm. Oh Henry, I hope you become a wonderful cook and I can be a little less of a parent and a little more of an dinner guest.

It'd be good to think you might get through without any of these moments.

That's not going to happen.

Unless you are so super careful that your smallie doesn't do anything or go anywhere you're probably going to cop a hard yard or two.

My mother, like yours I'm sure, is full of war stories. A baby going into febrile convulsion in the car, miles from home. Glandular fever knocking a child out for three months. Children falling off the top of slippery dips. Broken bones. Dreadful burns. Spectacular injuries.

And although they're awful, these moments really count.

So there's more to my Good Friday story. As Adam and I were walking out the door between the doctors visit and the hospital, Tilly showed me her thumb and said, "it's really sore, Mum." I looked at it. I thought: please don't let that be an almighty splinter right under her thumbnail, the whole length of the nail.

It was. With no end-y bit to pull it out.

My excellent mother in law (who was a nurse for many years) reviewed the situation while Adam and I were with Ivy at the hospital. There was no way around it. She needed it taken out. So once Ivy was settled and had seen the pediatrician, Adam went back, got Tilly and took her into Accident and Emergency where she proceeded to involve the entire waiting room in her colouring in.

While Ivy was having xrays upstairs in the children's ward, Tilly was bravely having the mother of all splinters extracted. I believe she was stoic and wonderful up until the point the doctor stuck a needle with local anesthetic under her thumbnail. Even then, according to Adam, she was pretty fantastic. And able to see the benefits of injury (chocolate). I saw her just after the extraction and she was pretty upset but valiantly holding onto her smarties. The doctor said to Adam that there was a reason this (splinter under fingernails) was used as a medieval torture device. It's bloody painful.

I'm so proud of my stoic little person. What a champion.

Even though there was still a big red line under the fingernail where the splinter had reached the nail bed, she checked up on her little sister, gave her a pat, and then suggested Adam take her home. Which he did.

Unfortunately you can't drink alcohol in a children's ward. Or even hot coffee or tea.

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

We got in the car yesterday, and drove for eight hours, and here we are on holidays.

We're so incredibly lucky the kids travel peacefully and happily without exception (OK, one "I'm BORED") from the four year old which was assuaged by a square of chocolate and the old portable DVD player strung up between the headrests.

Comes from locking them in the car for long stretches between Brisbane and Sydney at a young impressionable age I think.

So I'm just going to post the odd postcard here this week. I love a long car trip with Adam, he has nowhere to go and I can talk unhindered to him for ages. Awesome.

More than that, I love being away with this little Walmsley crew. Out of the routine, change of scene. All fun.

Hope your week is shaping up well, and if you're in school holidays where you are too, that you're having a break or at least the juggle of childcare and work isn't anxiety-producing.

I had a good flatbread recipe, briefly. My sister Naomi emailed it, I made it, it rocked, lost the recipe. Goneski.

While procrastinating asking for the recipe again, I started making this one.

It's a cobbled together recipe from about three sources, I think it's close to Naomi's 'cept hers uses wholewheat flour. And I can't remember about the yeast.

This one works well served with soup (we've found), or toasted with dips, or topped with fresh tomato or tomato sauce and melted cheese for a pizza-like dinner which actually got a cheer from the smallies. A cheer. I'd go a long way for a cheer from the diners.

Flatbread

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons (instant) yeast

1 tsp sugar

half cup warm water

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 cup tepid water

Method:

Stir the sugar into the warm water until it dissolves then sprinkle the yeast and leave (5 mins or so) till it bubbles.

Then add this to a big bowl containing the flour and salt. Mix well then add the tepid water.

Take out and knead on a floured board, keep adding flour until it's not too sticky to handle and is smooth and elastic.

Sit it, covered, until it doubles (about an hour or so). Then break it up into 12 balls, knead each one a bit and leave them, covered, for another 10 minutes.

Roll out each ball as thin as you can (about 1cm) and put onto lined baking tray.

Bake on 230 degrees C for 5 mins or until puffed up, turn over and bake about 3 mins second side.

If you want a pita-like pocket, leave at ball stage for longer before rolling out (thicker 'skin').

For a thinner wrap, press down firmly with a spatula after rising.

Cover them immediately with a cloth as you make them to keep them soft. They store well in ziplock bags.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

I remember the first time I ticked "home duties" on a form asking for my occupation. It needled and I wasn't proud.

If you'd asked me when I was fifteen, or twenty-five, how I'd feel about being a full time homemaker, I would have snorted my fair trade coffee up my nose. Homemaking was not how you changed the world.

And I wasn't even at all maternal until I was pregnant with my first baby.

The idea of baking bread, gardening, tending chooks, making laundry soap, these weren't the occupation of a smart girl. The smart girl didn't even take the chef's apprenticeship she was offered at 21, though she adored cooking. She was going to be professional.

And so she was.

I'm probably living someone's nightmare.

I know that making clothes for your family is not everyone's cup of tea.

I know the idea of making your own tomato sauce seems like an utter waste of time to some. (Blogging, it turns out, can be seen as an abject time-waster.)

I also know that not everyone has the opportunity to stay at home with their kids. The financial or social reality for some means that homemaking is something that has to be outsourced.

I'd like to think it's always a choice. Deliberate, considered. But of course it's not. Maybe once I've read Possum Living I'll figure out how people live without money. We haven't figured it out.

You have to pay the rent, right?

Today, as my poor wee babe's sore throat and ears responded to the antibiotics and she finally slept for two hours straight, I got busy homemaking. Washing, baking, drying bay leaves, making laundry powder, casting on another cowl (this time on purpose) and making flatbread (details and recipe tomorrow).

My critical feminist brain skittered across the jobs list, wondering at the feeling of satisfaction gained from folding washing off the line and re-making beds.

Because it is satisfying.

And I will not be told that I've adjusted to mediocrity. That finding joy in laundry means I've given up plans to change the world. I just found the world, right here, isn't so bad just the way it is. And from this place right here I'm stronger, able to organise, and my little words building a wall against the world's crap are a little bit clearer.

Is there something just a little bit holy in these everyday jobs? Particularly if you are there deliberately? Consciously? Not insanely pulling washing from the dryer while I wonder if I have anything for tomorrow's school lunches and what time was that meeting in the morning and the cleaner didn't come and so tired so tired spaghetti on toast for dinner.

There is no doubt there's something political about it.

So hello, homemakers. I hope you had a window of some kind to do a bit of homemaking today.

It's hard when you're out of action for any reason, sick babe, feeling blue, low energy.

Tuesday, 12 April 2011

Also, I have a sick and uncharacteristically miserable baby. Headcold, bit of fever, bit of throwing up, poor wee mite. Lots of cuddles and sips of water and 'osh, osh, osh'-ing (this family's version of hush.)